Interferometric imaging of reflective micro-objects in the presence of strong aberrations.

Some imaging techniques reduce the effect of optical aberrations either by detecting and actively compensating for them or by utilizing interferometry. A microscope based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer has been recently introduced to allow obtaining sharp images of light-transmitting objects in the presence of strong aberrations. However, the method is not capable of imaging microstructures on opaque substrates. In this work, we use a Michelson interferometer to demonstrate imaging of reflecting and back-scattering objects on any substrate with micrometer-scale resolution. The system is remarkably insensitive to both deterministic and random aberrations that can completely destroy the object's intensity image.